Chapter Four
Lobelia rocked back and forth, back and forth in her rocking chair. Midmorning had passed into evening without notice. The wizard had told her things, terrible things. She clutched the Ring on its fine chain, seeing the strange, fiery words still, as if they had been engraved in her mind.
One Ring to rule them all. So the stories were true, all that nonsense she had brushed off about dark happenings and nameless creatures. There was a Dark Lord, who was strong and growing stronger, and she had his Ring; had stolen it, in fact.
She glanced over at Gandalf as he smoked his pipe by the fire, and horror came over her. This was how the adventures always began: the wizard, or some other person just as mad, set a hobbit's brain on fire with tales of valor and desperate deeds. What would her relatives think of her if she went off, as he had said she must, forsaking home and sense and all the comforts of a Sackville-Baggins' existence?
This home was, indeed, comfortable. She had everything to her liking, though she had never realized it until now. She had been pining and grasping for something better all her life: more than sixty years it had been since Bag End was almost in her hands, but even before that it had been her life's goal to possess it. Now she wished she had never heard of the place; wished that she was not related in any way to Frodo Baggins. Better yet, that the Baggins had never existed and that she had been born a plain and simple Sackville.
The Shire was home and she wanted to stay.
"I'll give the Ring back to Frodo," she said, her voice weak and timid in her own ears.
"If only you could." Gandalf sighed. He did not turn to face her. "It would, I am afraid, only make things worse. If Frodo knew it was you who had taken it, he would not rest until he had forced it from you, and you would be unable to willingly hand it over."
"I cannot leave the Shire! I am an old woman, too old for adventures even if I wished for one. You took Bilbo at the prime of his life and, by all accounts, he barely survived. Besides which, I have an ailing husband to look after. What would happen to him if I went gallivanting to some Elvish place? He's none too popular in these parts."
"I will go with you and help you." The wizard smiled ever so slightly. "It is no more than I would have done for Frodo. If the Ring fell into the hands of the Enemy, neither you nor I would survive. Now." He stood. "I must leave for the present. I will come for you in a week; in the meantime, do not put the Ring on, and do not breathe a word of it to anyone. If Frodo had heeded my words, this would all have turned out much differently."